CoC : Tiamat - A Deeper Kind of Slumber : Review

Tiamat - _A Deeper Kind of Slumber_
(Century Media, 1997)
by: Pedro Azevedo (5 out of 10)

This is one of those albums in which the 'politically correct' attitude would be to value the 'heights of experimentation and oh-so-near-mainstream' that Tiamat take us to, but (of course) that's not what I'll do. Given, this is far from metal now, and I won't hack at the album for that - it might still be musically good. And, as a matter of fact, it is, for about half of its 60 minutes; the problem is that the rest is simply worthless. Tiamat's newest is mostly made of soft ballads, with rhythms similar to trip-hop(!) showing up quite often. Once in a while, they show you what this album might have been, what they could have done but -didn't- do. I've listened to some albums with ups and downs, some albums that have good tracks and bad tracks, but this is a bit too much. I'll go through all the tracks just to illustrate the steepness of these ups and downs. Track 1 has an undeniably enjoyable and catchy guitar melody. The second is regular Tiamat mellow song ('regular' meaning good, but nothing special compared to _Wildhoney_). Tracks 3 and 4 witness the arrival of trip hop and whatever else, and the departure of quality. At track 5, we are back to the average Tiamat song. Tracks 6 and 7 are the second really good part of the album, both very good stuff, the sixth being the follow-up I expected (and hoped for) from _Wildhoney_. Tracks 8 and 9 go waaay down again, and back to trip hop and all, track 9 being especially poor. Tracks 10 and 11 show some recovery, and things get enjoyable again, after which the album enters a slow finishing section. It's a strange experience trying to rate this album, as it contains some very good tracks, while half of the time it's just simply, er, crap. Be warned that some believe that this is the best album of 1997, so if you think you'll like the sort of experimentation Tiamat have done, try it. Personally, it failed to impress me.

(article published 7/6/1997)

CHATS
10/20/2003	J Smit	Tiamat: Let Us Prey
8/12/1999	D Rocher	Tiamat: Within the Sun's Own Shadow

ALBUMS
6/23/2007	J Ulrey	0	Tiamat - Commandments: An Anthology
9/21/2003	J Smit	8	Tiamat - Prey
12/9/1999	A Bromley	8.5	Tiamat - Skeleton Skeletron